Miami Quarterly

Issue date: 12/12/09 Section: Feature

9:30 pm   It's Wednesday night. Katie* hasn't slept since Saturday. She's not an insomniac. She doesn't have nightmares that keep her up all night. She stays awake on purpose, to study.

Katie takes at least one Adderall when she wants to stay up all night, not get distracted by sleep or hunger and to study mass amounts of notes and readings.

Dr. Joshua Hersh, a psychiatrist at the Student Counseling Service, says Adderall can be prescribed to treat those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder-Predominantly Inattentive which was once called Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).

 Katie hasn't been diagnosed with ADHD-Predominantly Inattentive and doesn't have an Adderall prescription.

 Adderall, like any stimulant and amphetamine, increases confidence, the feeling of alertness, talkativeness and decreases fatigue. This is why students abuse it so much. But what students don't know is that Adderall increases irritability, fearfulness, distrust of people and hallucinations, Hersh says.

 The symptoms can get worse when students push their body to the limit by using the drug to stay up all night and to curb their appetite.

 "You are at a high risk of getting manic or psychotic," Hersh says. "You can get heart problems or have a stroke if you are not evaluated properly."

Hersh says that naturally a body should crash after missing one night's sleep.

Katie hasn't slept in over three days and has to study for two exams. Katie is a junior in the honors program, is in a sorority and holds an on-campus job.

 I've known Katie for a few years, so she wasn't completely creeped out when I asked to stay a night with her to observe what she's like on Adderall.

By 9:15 she's off work and back home. By 9:30 she's taken two Adderalls. So our night begins.

10 pm

Katie makes herself comfortable in the brown leather chair next to the couch where I've planted myself for the evening. She has notebooks on the floor next to her and her laptop perched on her knees. This will be a long night.

She doesn't feel the effects yet, but when she does, I'll know it because she'll start talking faster.

I've spent some time with Katie when she's been studying all night without taking Adderall. At 11 pm on those nights, she's so exhausted she can't even stand up and falls to the living room floor. She mumbles short sentences that usually don't make much sense. Trying to hold a conversation with her is nearly impossible as she seems to be drifting in and out of consciousness.She'll leave the room in the middle of a sentence. Her mind isn't all there.

 But on this night, she's a completely different person.

 Katie starts talking faster and going off on random tangents ranging from evolution to the process of getting into the FBI.

 After a few more minutes, Katie asks me if I want to try Adderall. She won't even make me pay for it.

"You're going to have to stay up with me, anyways," Katie says. "Don't you want to get a lot done?"

Katie makes taking Adderall look so appetizing. Here she is, wide awake, while I'm struggling to stay alert.

I decline her polite invitation, but I know this won't be the last time she offers it to me tonight. Katie's roommate is sitting with us and is completely against Adderall. They get into a little confrontation about illegal substances.

Katie tries to put underage drinking and taking pills without a prescription on the same level. Sergeant Squance of the Oxford Police Department disagrees and says that prescription drugs are way more serious.


 "It is a Felony 5 to sell or have drugs without a prescription," Squance says. "This means six to 12 months in prison and a $2,500 fine.

"In comparison, underage drinking is a Misdemeanor 1 with a maximum fine of $1000, but Squance says most people don't pay the maximum.







 




It isn't easy to catch students with prescription drugs though. "

The main reason we catch somebody is if we arrest someone for another offense and we find it in their pockets or at their residence and they can't come up with prescription for it," Squance says.

This problem is mostly from people giving their prescription drugs to their friends, Squance says.

"My friend Sarah* has a prescription," Katie says.

Sarah is a junior and got her prescription for Adderall in April. Sarah first tried to go through the university, but the process took too long.

The process for students to get an Adderall prescription through Student Health Services takes about two months.

Students must first go through a phone screening, then an attention problem evaluation, followed by an ADHD workshop held by Hersh. Then, students must sit down with a staff psychiatrist to fill out a weekly planner to help stay organized and plan when to take their pills.

Hersh says that comprehensive treatment system eliminates those students feigning symptoms just to abuse the drug. "The students we see don't misuse," Hersh says. "If they are going to misuse they aren't going to wait one to two months. The students who go through this have to be motivated for treatment and they do quite well on our program.

"Sarah thought Miami's program was too much of a hassle so she went to her doctor at home, told her she had been tested at school and was diagnosed with ADD. Without even asking to see the results, her doctor gave her the Adderall prescription. "She just wrote me a script for it," Sarah says. "She told me that there is nothing wrong with Adderall and if it helps my grades, then why wouldn't I take it?"

While taking the test for ADD at Miami, Sarah didn't lie on the questionnaire, but admits all she was thinking about was what she could say to make sure she walked away with a prescription.

"The questions they ask would make it seem like everyone has ADD," Sarah says. "Like a question was 'do you daydream a lot?' Well, who doesn't daydream? The only thing I did was exaggerate some of my answers to make it seem like such things as daydreaming were interfering with my everyday life."

Sarah now takes two 10 milligram Adderall capsules every six hours. She takes her Adderall in order to study, pay attention in class, stay awake and to not eat.

"I don't take more for all nighters," Sarah says. "I just make sure that I take more as soon as I start feeling it wear off. I don't take more than my recommended amount because for me it has negative effects on my body.

11 pm

"Katie's roommate goes to bed and Katie decides to start studying. She offers me Adderall and again I decline.

"One bad thing about Adderall is sometimes you concentrate on the wrong things," Katie says.

"Like right now I'm looking up Adderall on Wikipedia."

Adderall also curbs her appetite.

"It's like when you have the flu," she says. "Nothing sounds good and you don't want anything."

Wikipedia says extreme weight loss is one use of the drug.

Hersh disagrees that Adderall can be used for long-term weight loss because it only temporarily suppresses appetite.

Katie's used Adderall the past few days so she doesn't eat. Yesterday she lost 2.5 pounds from not eating all day.

"I work at a health store," she says. "I know all about this stuff. I looked into it before I started taking it. I know I can't get addicted. I'm not addicted. I don't crave it. I don't take it during the summer. I only take it when I need to study, and I can study without it."

I ask Katie what it feels like to be on Adderall. "It makes you do everything you need to," she says. "It gives you extreme concentration. Like if I have to go to the bathroom, I get mad because I don't want to so I take my notes with me."

This all sounds very appealing to someone who is struggling to finish her homework. "It makes you feel like superman," Katie says. "Who wouldn't want to be superman?"

11:30 pm

Katie started taking Adderall during first semester finals her sophomore year. She was studying with a friend who had a prescription and who gave her some free pills.

She discovered she gets less jittery from Adderall than from coffee and other caffeinated drinks. She's also way more focused.

Now, Katie buys her Adderall from Sarah. She pays $20 for five pills. Another one of Katie's friend charges $18 for four pills, but his have a higher milligram.

"At Miami there is a definite demand and barely any supply," Katie says. "I had ('taking Adderall') as a (Facebook) status during finals week and I had people contact me asking to get some."

Sarah has benefited from Adderall being in high demand at Miami. Her customers find her. She has two students who always buy from her, but other than that, her numbers vary weekly.

Sarah pays $40 for 90 tablets and usually sells 20 to 30 of her tablets.

"During a good week I can make $100, but it's mostly $20 or $40 every now and then," she says.

Sarah is the only one out of her friends to have an actual prescription for Adderall, so she knew that she could make money.

"I think a lot of students want to buy Adderall because it helps you study if you are looking at the academic part of it, and then there are others who want to lose weight," Sarah says. "And some snort it for partying."

Katie doesn't feel bad about taking Adderall. She's even told her mom.

"She kind of doesn't really get it," Katie says. "She wouldn't do it, but she understands. She wants me to get good grades and get into law school so she's okay with it."

Katie thinks the benefits of Adderall outweigh the risks.

"It could be the difference between getting a B- and an A and that could be the difference between getting into a good law school and not," Katie says.

Katie got a D in economics before starting Adderall. She's now taking 17 credit hours and has raised her GPA to a 3.34.

Before exams though (especially essays), she doesn't take it because it puts her on edge. Once however, she took it before a multiple choice microbiology exam, finished in 20 minutes and got a 97 percent.

Sarah's GPA has gone from a 2.0 to straight A's since she started taking Adderall, but unlike Katie, it's hard for her to work without it.

"My grades have actually significantly gotten better since I've been taking it," Sarah says. "On occasion, I'll forget to take my Adderall and it's like I've never taken notes before in class.

12 pm

"Katie's curled up in her chair studying She's reading notes off her computer, taking written notes and highlighting old notes. Multitasking.

1 am

Katie's still reading her notes. I try to tempt her away from her studies with a hilarious YouTube video but she tells me she's too busy studying. I set my alarm for 4 am and try to sleep.

4 am

The room is dark except for a light in the corner. When I wake up, Katie asks me to quiz her on the WWII timeline she created. I can barely form words, yet she answers all my questions correctly, giving dates and information for each event I give her.

She's been studying about 15 hours for her 8 am history exam. She hasn't started studying for her microbiology exam later in the afternoon though.

I go back to sleep.

6 am

Katie packs up her things while I sleep on the couch. She's meeting Sarah at the library at 6:30 for a last minute study session.

The Rest Of Her Day

Katie went to her 8 am history exam. She gets an A. Then she takes another Adderall. From 9:30 am to 3:45 pm she studies for her microbiology exam. She gets an A.

Even though she finished, she doesn't go to sleep until 1:45 am.

"There are just not enough hours in the day," Katie says. "If you would've asked me five years ago if I wanted to take Adderall, I would have said I wasn't interested, but my future is the most important element of my life. So that's why I do it."

This is just one story of a student on Adderall. Hersh says everyone reacts to drugs differently. He sees students every year who have bad reactions from abusing Adderall.

*Names have been changed per request of the sources.

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